Venom in Her Veins (37 page)

“There’s no sense of scale on this map, though,” Glory said, turning the sheet of parchment over and peering at it upside down. “I have no idea how long the journey might take us. A few tendays to reach Delzimmer—though it might be best if we swing wide around the city, lest your relatives get their hands on you and lock you up in a tower somewhere. After that, though, there are just
leagues
and
leagues
to cover. And there’s no telling what we’ll run into along the way.”

“I know,” Julen said. “Back home, I’d be taking Advanced Poisons class right now, and then spending two hours practicing my knife work, and then reading classics. But now, I have
no idea
what’s going to happen next. It’s amazingly liberating.”

Glory looked at Zaltys and shook her head. “Humans,” she said. “They’re impossible.”

“Yes,” Zaltys agreed. “But what can we do? He’s family.” They set off into the green vastness of the jungle.

As they passed under the low-hanging branches, a pale green serpent slithered behind them in Zaltys’s shadow.

She pretended not to notice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sincere thanks to my editor Fleetwood Robbins for giving me the chance to write an adventure set in a world I love; my agent Ginger Clark for helping make it happen; my wife Heather Shaw for giving me time and space to write; Jenn Reese and Chris East for letting me hole up in their guest room for a week as I pushed through to finish the first draft; David Moles for his excellent criticism and suggestions; and my old D&D-playing friends from high school: Millard Arnold IV, Bobby McArthur, and Matt Lane.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Pratt began playing AD&D with friends in high school, and soon ended up running a vast campaign that liberally borrowed from various D&D settings, comics, and science fiction. In recent years he’s sublimated his urge to run games into writing fiction, though writing fiction is a lot lonelier. He’s won a Hugo Award for his fiction writing, and been a finalist for World Fantasy, Stoker, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, and Nebula Awards. He also publishes an urban fantasy series as T.A. Pratt. Visit his website at
timpratt.org
.

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